My most recent project requires lots of colourful graphic elements.
Stuff like HIRES sprites and their animation frames, inlay HIRES screens and smaller graphic objects.
These sprites are easy to draw in black and white on a PC but much more difficult to draw in colour without knowing where to place colour attributes.
And even when this is done the only true guarentee that any image works on the oric is to convert it using Pictconv or PCHIRES then load it into the Oric.
Even then we have to convert the colour graphic from a pc file into an XA source file (this can be done through Dbugs utilities i believe).

So to make things a little easier i have added a new option in HIDE (The Oric Graphic editor) that will allow you to select an area from 12x2 to 16x118 and dump the rectangle to the printer as an xa data file like this..

You can select larger areas but their is a line feed problem which i haven't fixed yet.
The utility to select the area is not fast since its completely written in BASIC.
This has been invaluable for me and may be useful to others. So i provide it below.

You are quite right. Even with OSKD utilities, which make it easy (nearly inmediate -- I do it just with one click for all the graphics in Space:1999) to convert pics to oric sources and include them in your program, it can be difficult, moreover with coloful graphics.

However, as happens with music, I'd look for a different solution: one based on a PC (probably Windows) program. A utility able to reproduce the Oric's Hires screen where you could edit your graphics.

You could have a mode for sprite animation sequence, automatic mask generation, you can import a pic with pictconv and then edit what is needed, play with attributes with a mouse click, select, cut&paste screen regions, have different zoom levels...

Even if HIDE and AT are really great utilities and have nearly all the functionality that is needed, I am sure developers would benefit a lot from Windows based programs. And now that I mention AT, I would love to have it finished... it is the only program I have been ever able to make some Oric music with...

True I'd prefer a windows tracker that uses a simulated AY, but AT is really cool! And better if we could have a tool to create sfx!!!

How long did it take to me to develop WHITE's room editor in Visual Basic? a couple of months? I only wonder how long it would have been if done under Oric

I have seen what can be done with HIDE and it is THE way to get the most out of the Oric screen... it is just that I think it would be way easier to have something similar under Windows

And before anyone says it, I don't have time to take such a project now... Sorry

Actually, I think the way to go is to have both a PC/MAC application (ie: a portable application), which could connect to a real oric for real feedback (because the real oric displaying on a real tv, or the real oric outputing real sound, is better than emulated one).

Dbug wrote:Actually, I think the way to go is to have both a PC/MAC application (ie: a portable application), which could connect to a real oric for real feedback (because the real oric displaying on a real tv, or the real oric outputing real sound, is better than emulated one).

Well yes, of course. However that would mean I, for instance, would not be able to use it... Don't have a real Oric with a TV working at hand

Actually, about 10 years ago Philippe Montegnie made an Oric drawing program for DOS, in Pascal, called Editoric. I have no idea if Philippe is still around...

Running with a real Oric was what I thought once, this could be done with a tape audio connection between PC and Oric (as long as you're not afraid to burn your Oric or soundcard !), sending each modified byte.

Chema wrote:However, as happens with music, I'd look for a different solution: one based on a PC (probably Windows) program. A utility able to reproduce the Oric's Hires screen where you could edit your graphics.

I partly agree. I would go so far as to want a windows (or cross platform) utility that could display the Oric screen and would permit the drag/dropping(or even cut/paste) of images and graphics from explorer or other apps into it. The program would then convert to display the image and then at a single click dump the image to a chosen format.

But i would not put the editing facility into the app since that would make the project much too large to scope.

But all this is elementary to me since the original aim of the addition to hide was to provide an easy means of getting Oric HIRES graphics into .s source files for Wurlde and it does it now. I also only thought of "publishing" it after i'd used it alot and thought of the bigger audience.

AT is not finished as you pointed out Chema. I can provide the sources but have no time currently to finish it myself.